1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a lighter, and more particularly to a piezoelectric lighter which comprises a safety lock for preventing the lighter from being accidentally or undesirably ignited, especially by children.
2. Description of Related Arts
For protecting the safety and benefit of children, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission imposed an important regulation that xe2x80x9cChild below 5 years old cannot light the lighterxe2x80x9d. Some of the piezoelectric lighters, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,786,248, 4,859,172, 5,240,408, 5,368,473, and 5,462,432, each provides a switching mechanism for rendering the piezoelectric lighter child resistant. Each switching mechanism provides a switch member requiring the adult user to turn on before permitting an thumb-operated piezoelectric unit to be depressed to lift a gas pipe to open a gas release valve to emit gas and to generate sparks at the same time to ignite the emitted gas.
However, such conventional piezoelectric lighters with switching mechanism also bear the drawbacks as follows:
1. Some switching mechanisms require the piezoelectric lighter to alter its structure in order to equip with the switch member. Or, numerous of additional elements of the switching mechanism are required to incorporate with the traditional piezoelectric lighter for ensuring the safety feature thereof. Such costly switching mechanism not only increases the cost of the lighter, but also increases the manufacturing procedures of the lighter.
2. If the user forgets to turn off the switch member to its locking position the piezoelectric lighter is already to ignite by any child. In other words such switch-type safety piezoelectric lighter can provide safety function if and only if the adult user remembers to operate an additional turning off action to re-lock the switching mechanism of the piezoelectric lighter again. Most users may even intentionally skip this re-locking operation.
In fact, the conventional switching mechanism of the piezoelectric lighter is a manual lock only but can not be classified as a safety lock because a real safety lighter should normally be locked, that is the piezoelectric lighter should automatically re-lock after each ignition operation, so as to prevent the children from igniting the lighter anytime, or to prevent the lighter from accidentally or unintentionally be ignited by the user.
A main object of the present invention is to provide a safety lock for piezoelectric lighter for preventing accidental or undesirable ignition of the piezoelectric lighter.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a piezoelectric lighter incorporated with a safety lock wherein the lighter can only be ignited by applying simultaneous inward and downward forces to the ignition button in one continuous action. That is, accidental or undesirable ignition would be avoided because of the relatively indirect ignition mechanism.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a safety lock for a piezoelectric lighter which does not alter the original structural design of conventional piezoelectric lighter, thus to minimize the manufacturing cost of the piezoelectric lighter.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a safety lock for a piezoelectric lighter, which can automatically return to a locking condition after each ignition operation, so as to prevent any lighting operation of the piezoelectric unit by locking up the downward movement of the pusher cap.
Accordingly, in order to accomplish the above objects the present invention provides a piezoelectric lighter, which comprises:
a lighter casing having an internal fuel chamber for storing liquefied fuel;
a supporting frame which is supported on a ceiling of the lighter casing having a pusher cavity, an ignition cavity, and a pair of supporting walls upwardly extended from two opposite sides of the supporting frame, wherein each of the supporting walls has a longitudinal sliding groove formed thereon;
an ignition system which comprises a gas-emitting nozzle received in the ignition cavity of the supporting frame and communicated with the internal fuel chamber of the lighter casing, and a piezoelectric unit disposed in said lighter casing for generating sparks;
an ignition button which is slidably disposed in the pusher cavity of the supporting frame in such a manner that when the ignition button is depressed downwardly, the gas emitting nozzle is lifted up for releasing gaseous fuel, and the piezoelectric unit is arranged to generate sparks for igniting the fuel released from the gas emitting nozzle; and
a safety lock, comprising a locking member which is slidably mounted on the ignition button and comprises a pair of guiding arms for switching between a locked state and an unlocked state of the lighter, wherein in the locked state, the pair of guiding arms are adapted to bias against top ends of the two sliding grooves respectively for restricting a downward movement of the ignition button, and in the unlocked state, the pair of guiding arms are adapted to move forwardly from the locked position and aligned with the two sliding grooves respectively, so that the pair of guiding arms and therefore the ignition button are capable of sliding downwardly when a depressive force is applied to the ignition button.
In order to ignite the lighter of the present invention one has to apply both the inward and downward forces simultaneously to the safety lock and the ignition button respectively in one action. At the same time the ignition button is being pressed down, the gas-emitting nozzle is lifted up for releasing gaseous fuel. When the ignition button is depressed to a certain ignition point, sparks are generated by the piezoelectric unit to ignite the fuel emitted from the gas-emitting nozzle.